


Mama Bear

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Cisco would approve, F/M, mama snow will cut a bitch, seriously Thomas what were you thinking, teen!Caitlin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 06:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16718374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Carla knows Caitlin prefers her father. But when she finds out what Thomas did to their daughter, that won't stop her doing what needs to be done.





	Mama Bear

Carla Tannhauser wasn’t a stupid woman.

She knew people had called her the Ice Queen behind her back since she was twelve years old.

When she took over her father’s company in a bloody coup, she knew the outgoing board of directors were cursing her name as they packed up their desk. She didn’t know what their problem was. They’d gotten their severance, hadn’t they?

She wasn't completely devoid of family feeling, and permitted her brother to retain some of his stock options, even if he was no longer CEO. Rank sentimentality, surely, and one she’d paid for when he tried to counter-coup her a year later. She learned her lesson, and cut him off completely.

When she declined to take her husband’s name upon their marriage, she knew people were putting down bets on how long the marriage would last. Six months? A year? Eighteen months at the outset.

When Thomas first brought Caitlin in to show off around the office, Carla knew that people were looking at the sleeping baby with pity. “Poor kid,” they muttered. “With that as a mother.”

She knew that Caitlin preferred her father. With all their whispered secrets and special outings, with “Caity” instead of “Caitlin,” with hot chocolate smuggled to her room to be consumed past her bedtime. Of course Caitlin preferred her father.

Carla was the parent who made sure her grades stayed up, that she could speak politely and intelligently to the men and women who would be working for her in twenty years, that she understood the history and value of scientific research, and that she served her full detention for punching that bitchy little Lexi girl in the face.

Carla had also ensured that Mitzi LaRoche dropped the assault charges, but Caitlin didn’t know about that.

Caitlin didn’t know about a lot of things that Carla did for her daughter’s own good.

Like the day she came home early and found Caitlin in her bathroom with pure white hair and ice-pale skin, with cool mist sifting off her hands. _“Caitlin,”_ she said, and even the sound of her own voice twisted horror in her stomach.

“Mom!” Caitlin said, whipping the box of hair dye behind her back. “I - I was - this isn’t - ”

She looked at Caitlin and she _knew._

She turned around and she walked out of the bathroom without another word.

She found Thomas in his office, his research spread out over his desk, scribbling notes as fast he could. She slammed her hand down squarely in the middle of the diagram that he was looking at, and he jolted so hard his chair rolled back a foot.

“Carla! You - you’re home?”

“You experimented,” she said. “On our daughter.”

“No,” he said. “I mean, yes. Carlie, I had to. She had the same genetic marker for ALS. You saw the tests. I couldn't put her through that disease, not if I could stop it.”

“So you decided the thing to do was use her as your guinea pig? When we know what happened to you?”

She still woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, after dreaming of the cold-eyed maniac that had begun to surface in her sweet husband.

She should have known she couldn’t trust him with their daughter anymore.

“No, no, I’ve halted that,” he said. “Remember? And I changed the formula for Caity. It was safe. It was a different formula. It would keep that gene from ever expressing and she could live a long and healthy - ”

Carla leaned in, her voice the hiss that everyone from the VPs to the janitorial staff feared like the Angel of Death. _“Then why is she turning her bathroom into a meat locker?”_

“There was an accident,” he said. “She was on her bike, she almost got hit by a car - it must have been the adrenaline, darling, I had no idea that would happen - I’m going to stop it. I’m going to halt it. She won't even remember.”

“How many doses has she taken?”

“Two or three.”

“Is it two or three?”

“Three. In her morning smoothies.”

The smoothies Caitlin had suddenly decided she liked to drink on the way to school. Assembled especially for her by Thomas, every morning. “And what will it take the halt the effects?”

“I think the same formula that halted it in me. I have the calculations all right here - ”

She lifted her other hand and pointed the butcher knife she held directly at his heart. “In ten minutes, I’m going to call an ambulance,” she said very quietly. “Tomorrow morning, I’m going to tell our daughter that you suddenly died. Now.” She rested the tip on his shirt, just above a button. “Am I going to be lying, or am I going to be telling the truth?”

“Carla,” he breathed. “Carla, I -”

“You experimented on our daughter,” she said again. “What in the hell did you think I would do when I found out?”

“I hoped you never would.”

“That much seems clear.”

The tip of the butcher knife pressed into his chest with each gulping breath.

“Where would I go?” he said finally.

She lowered the knife. “TI has a defunct black ops site in the Arctic,” she said. “That seems far enough.”

His head dropped. “I’m sorry,” he said in a shaking voice. “All I wanted was the best for Caity.”

“She’s our daughter,” Carla said. “Not a lab rat.”

He lifted his head. “I love you, Carla.”

How fucking dare.

After what he’d done.

She lifted her chin, letting the hauteur settle over her face like a mask. “I love you too,” she said. “But I love her more.”

* * *

“You’re working?” said a cracking voice.

Carla lifted her head to see Caitlin standing in the doorway of her home office. She was dressed all in black, and it sapped the color from her complexion.

Back to normal, thank God. 

Thomas had been telling the truth about that, at least. By the time Carla had sat her down to tell her, “Your father died last night in the hospital,” the tears had gushed from big brown eyes and streamed down warm pink skin again.

“You’re working?" Caitlin repeated. _"Today?”_

Carla closed down her email. “The world doesn’t stop just because somebody died, Caitlin.”

“But we buried Dad today!”

“Yes, we did,” Carla said. “And now it’s over.”

“Have you even cried once? _Mom?_ Have you cried for your husband?”

Her eyes felt bone-dry. She hadn’t shed a tear at the service, during the eulogy, throughout the endless stream of visitors with their false platitudes. “It seems to me you’ve been carrying on enough for both of us.”

Caitlin stared at her. Even now, more tears rolled down her soft, baby-round cheeks, blotchy with older tear stains and a few pimples. “It should have been you,” she spat, and whirled to run away.

Carla watched her go, long hair flying, gawky limbs flailing. “No,” she said very quietly. “It really shouldn’t have.”

She opened her email again and checked the status of the black ops site in the Arctic Circle. Fully online. Fully sealed. One occupant only. Thomas wasn’t leaving for a very long time, if ever. And neither was his bitter-cold stowaway.

She wasn’t a stupid woman.

She’d known what Thomas’s “death” would do to her daughter.

She’d done it anyway.

FINIS


End file.
